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Habitats of the Striated Grasswren Amytornis Striatus Rowleyi at Opalton, Central Western Queensland

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Habitats of the Striated Grasswren Amytornis Striatus Rowleyi at Opalton, Central Western Queensland Australian Field Ornithology 2014, 31, 1–16 Habitats of the Striated Grasswren Amytornis striatus rowleyi at Opalton, central western Queensland K.A. Wood 8 Kalamunda Street, North Lakes QLD 4509, Australia Email: [email protected] Summary. Habitat of the Striated Grasswren Amytornis striatus rowleyi (Rusty Grasswren A. rowleyi) was examined at 51 sites with spinifex Triodia spp. at Opalton in central western Queensland during 14 visits between May 2009 and October 2012. At both small (radius 30 m) and large (radius 100 m) spatial scales, Striated Grasswrens occupied mostly Normanton Box Eucalyptus normantonensis low open woodland on spinifex-covered flat or gently sloped terrain with sandy soil covered by brown or reddish-brown lateritic gravel. This habitat comprised 55–57% of all habitats used at both sampling scales. The Grasswrens occurred less frequently Forum— in other spinifex-covered low open woodland or low open forest sites dominated by Mountain Yapunyah E. thozetiana, Lancewood Acacia shirleyi, Mulga A. aneura or Gidgee A. cambagei. A sparse shrub layer of Witchetty Bush A. kempeana or cassia Senna spp. was present in ~50% of sites sampled at the larger scale. Six sites on low Do Tasmanian Southern Boobooks migrate? caprock mesas were characterised by a relatively high density of Witchetty Bush shrubs (maximum cover 15%) and a relatively low cover of spinifex (14.8%) under a Jerry Olsen1* and S.J.S. Debus2 sparse tree layer of Mountain Yapunyah or Lancewood. The overall average height of spinifex hummocks (excluding seeding stalks) was 37.5 cm, and the average cover of spinifex was 26.3%. 1Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia 2Zoology, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] Introduction The Striated Grasswren Amytornis striatus is a polytypic species comprising three subspecies: A. s. whitei in the Pilbara; A. s. striatus in the inland deserts, Murray– Mallee and central New South Wales; and A. s. rowleyi in the Forsyth Range system in central western Queensland (Schodde & Mason 1999). It is a small (~18 g) secretive passerine that spends most of its time on the ground and moves quickly for cover in spinifex hummocks when disturbed (Pringle 1982; Schodde 1982). In western Queensland, Striated Grasswrens were first collected in 1967, ~32 km south of Opalton (Macdonald 1970). Some 32 years later, in 1999, this isolated western Queensland population was recognised as a subspecies (Schodde & Mason 1999) and named A. s. rowleyi after Ian Rowley. More recently, studies of mitochondrial DNA in Australian grasswrens suggest that A. s. rowleyi may be a true species (Christidis et al. 2010). Indeed at the time that this paper went to press, Christidis et al. (2013) explicitly elevated it to species status, giving it the name of Rusty Grasswren A. rowleyi. Most contemporary observations have been near Opalton and Lark Quarry Conservation Park (records from BirdLife Australia: see Barrett et al. 2003) but no published field-based studies on A. s. rowleyi are known. 2 Australian Field Ornithology K.A. Wood Broadly, Striated Grasswrens live in spinifex Triodia spp. (Schodde 1982; Parker 2003) whether on sandplains, dunes or stony hills (Schodde 1982). A. s. striatus has been referred to as the sandplain subspecies (Brouwer & Garnett 1990), whereas A. s. whitei occurs in rocky hills in the Pilbara (Johnstone et al. 2013) and A. s. rowleyi occurs in stony breakaways in western Queensland (Schodde 1982). More recently, Schodde & Mason (1999) ascribed the habitat of A. s. rowleyi as spinifex on a mixture of sandplains and rocky hills, whereas Higgins et al. (2001) grouped A. s. rowleyi with A. s. striatus and stated that both these subspecies occupied spinifex grasslands with or without an overstorey of shrubs and mallee eucalypts on sandplains, dunes and swales. At Opalton, however, spinifex grows in patches, usually with an overstorey of shrubs or eucalypts, but not on sandplains or sand-dunes. Rather, the terrain with spinifex at Opalton is mostly level or gently sloping stony ground. The aim of the present study was to determine the habitats occupied by Striated Grasswrens at Opalton by sampling at two spatial scales, nominally ‘small’ (radius 30 m) and ‘large’ (radius 100 m). Study area The circular study area was centred on Opalton (23°15′S, 142°46′E), ~100 km south of Winton (Figure 1; see also AUSLIG 1: 250 000 Topographic NATMAP: Maneroo) in the Channel Country (Bioregion 5 in the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection’s regional ecosystem framework). An arbitrary radius of 6 km was chosen after considering the observer’s personal safety and a need to effectively search the site. The study area is characterised by a series of low ranges (maximum altitude ~270 m above sea-level), from which many incised gullies and small drainage lines terminate in Sandy Creek (altitude ~240 m asl) or other creeks outside the study area. The landscape consisted of a mosaic of vegetation types (herein ‘habitats’) and ecotonal areas. At altitudes >260 m asl, low caprock mesas were dominated by scattered Mountain Yapunyah (5–7 m tall) and a sparse shrub layer of acacias and cassias (scientific names are in Table 2). Scarps of mesas supported Lancewood (7–9 m tall) on stony lithosols, sometimes dense without any understorey of shrubs or grasses. The upper and lower slopes of mesas (and occasionally low hills) were gentle, dominated by Normanton Box low open woodland (4–6 m tall) and Gidgee low open woodland (5–7 m tall), respectively. Sandy Creek was lined with River Red Gums (10–15 m tall) and Mulga (6–8 m tall) south of the road crossing (Figure 1) and Coolabah Eucalyptus coolabah (8–12 m tall) north of the crossing, where it formed braided channels up to 0.8 km wide. Small pockets of Mulga low open woodland, sometimes with isolated small patches of spinifex, were scattered generally through the study area except for the northern sector, where large stands of pure Mulga (without spinifex) occurred on red soils. Spinifex covered about half of the area, mostly on the upper slopes and mesa areas. It was generally absent from the lower slopes, where Gidgee or Mulga low open woodland or cassia shrubland persisted, and also from the braided channels of Sandy Creek. Vegetation types in the Channel Country bioregion are described in detail elsewhere (Department of Environment and Heritage Protection 2013). Because the area has been extensively mined for opal since 1888 (McKenzie 2000), numerous eroded miners’ tracks and abandoned diggings are present. There has been no grazing by domestic livestock and there have been no major bushfires for at least 20 years (P. Gregory & A. Hubbard pers. comm. 2012). Most annual rainfall (75%) is tropical in origin, falling between November and March. The nearest weather station accredited by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is Weona Station (No. 37104), 22 km north, where the long-term average annual rainfall, recorded continuously for 48 years, is 360 mm. The first Striated Grasswren habitat, Opalton, Queensland 3 Figure 1. Circular study area (radius 6 km) and overlaid grid in minutes of latitude (south of 23°S) and longitude (east of 142°E). The value in the top left of a square is the cumulative searching effort (hours) in that 1-minute square. Closed circles (●) indicate sites where individuals or groups of Striated Grasswrens were seen (n = 51). The main road (unbroken line), Sandy Creek (dashed line) and large stands of pure Mulga without spinifex grass (shaded) are also shown. two visits to Opalton were at the end of an 8-year drought (Queensland Government 2013) that was broken by heavy rains in summer 2009/2010. Above-average rainfall and good seasons prevailed until the completion of surveys in October 2012. Methods The study site was divided into a grid of 1-minute squares (Figure 1) and visited 14 times between May 2009 and October 2012. During these visits, ranging from 1 to 18 days (median duration 5.5 days), searches for Striated Grasswrens were undertaken for a total of 138.1 cumulative hours as follows: May 2009 (0.7 h), October 2009 (20.4 h), April 2010 (12.8 h), May 2010 (8.8 h), August 2010 (10.2 h), October 2010 (3.6 h), November 2010 (3.8 h), April 2011 (5.0 h), May 2011 (8.0 h), September 2011 (2.7 h), October 2011 (18.8 h), March 2012 (9.5 h), May 2012 (8.9 h) and September–October 2012 (24.9 h). Most 1-minute grid squares with spinifex were searched (Figure 1), but with variable effort depending on accessibility. Those searched included all spinifex-covered woodland and forest types (sensu Specht 1981) in the study area. 4 Australian Field Ornithology K.A. Wood Sites where individual or groups of Striated Grasswrens were first seen were used as centre-points for sampling the habitat at a small scale (radius 30 m) and assessing its structural form in both small- and large-scale (radius 100 m) habitat plots. These particular scales were chosen after consideration of the Grasswren’s approximate territory size and the tightly meshed mosaic of habitat types that existed at Opalton (sensu Jones 2001). Because the maximum territory size for A. s. striatus in the South Australian mallee was 5.2 ha (equivalent diameter 260 m: Karubian 2001), I attempted at first to find adjacent sites >260 m apart so as to sample habitat in different territories. After the fourth visit, however, I inadvertently began to see some Grasswrens at sites that were <260 m from the sites found previously. To increase the size of the overall pool of data, while recognising that the number of territories sampled may not increase, 11 sites <260 m apart (‘b’ and ‘c’ sites, Appendix 1; median separation 200 m) were analysed in addition to the 40 primary survey sites (i.e.
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